The Sunwheel
by ccgaylord
Summary: Sixth story in the Fanfiction Christmas Countdown series. Set shortly after the first movie. The Vikings celebrate Yule with traditional rites such as the sunwheel, a wooden ring lit on fire and rolled down a hill to celebrate the return of the sun. This is actually a very dangerous practice... K plus for some minor language on Astrid's part.


Hello, everybody! Welcome to day six. Can you believe we're halfway done already? Oh and Christmas is now less than a week away... *starts to panic*

Okay, sorry for the obscure fandoms. Tomorrow's will be a little better-known, I promise.

Oops, forgot this part:

If you're reading this and haven't heard about the Fanfiction Christmas Countdown, you can read the first story in the series, _The Iron Hills Mall, _on Lily Lindsey-Aubrey's profile page.

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><p>Next things next; replies to reviews for <em>Christmas Night in Arkham<em>:

**2MFriedmanFreak**: Hahah...that's not exactly what we had in mind...but now I wish it was! :P Oh, good! We were afraid people wouldn't get it, if they hadn't seen the movie. Well, to tell the truth, Rachel, in the first movie, was really pretty nice...for a girlfriend. In the later ones, she was annoying. But you could kinda understand why he liked her. YAY! Have fun. :D  
><strong>Melkor'sOnlyLieutenant<strong>: No, he really isn't. Even in the movie. (Oh, I told Lily you said that, and she was like, "Yeah...she really isn't the type of person who would like Bruce..." :P) Thanks! I had fun with that part. :D Heh...knowing you, I expected that. And the villains in Dark Knight/Batman are just so fun.  
><strong>ThurinRanger<strong>: Thanks! Ha...that part was very fun to write. :D Good! Cause it's here!  
><strong>MOSObsessed<strong>: Thank you! Yeah, we were afraid that it might go over some people's heads, but I'm glad you found it funny!  
><strong>Silenthunder<strong>: I don't remember, but have I ever told you I think YOU ARE AWESOME!? :P Thanks for reviewing, and for adding me to your favourites...I was totally overwhelmed.  
><strong>Thalion Estel<strong>: Lol, so glad you liked it! :D No, unfortunately...the only smiley remover I have is the backspace button, which unfortunately I can't send you. :P Thanks, and you're welcome!

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><p>If you haven't seen How to Train Your Dragon, it's a movie about vikings. Dragons used to be enemies, now they're friends. Everybody lives in a village called Berk. That's the movie all summed up. Now, here's the<p>

Cast:

Hiccup (a viking kid)

Toothless (Hiccup's pet dragon)

Stoick (Hiccup's dad)

Gobber (the blacksmith Hiccup works for)

Astrid (Hiccup's girlfriend)

Ruffnut/Tuffnut (twins; Hiccup's friends)

Snotlout (Hiccup's friend)

Fishlegs (Hiccup's friend)

Snotlout's dad (voiced by David Tennant #awesome)

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><p><strong>The Sunwheel<strong>

_On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me six geese a laying..._

Today was the holiday that vikings call Yule.

In Berk, it's just another excuse to eat food. Not that anyone ever needs an excuse to eat food at any time, but an excuse is always nice. Ask any viking what his favourite holiday is and he'll say "Yule." Ask him what he does at Yule and he'll tell you that he eats. A lot.

My dad likes to tell about the year the village ate so much that everyone had indigestion for three months. Do I believe him? Yes, I do.

Eating is not the only thing that happens at Yule. Vikings have a thing about trying to bring back the sun from its winter ramblings by doing crazy things—like lighting bonfires, burning enormous Yule logs, and rolling blazing wooden sunwheels down hills. How is that going to make the sun want to come back? Yeah, well...we're vikings. We have issues.

Last year Snotlout lit the biggest bonfire anyone in Berk had ever seen, using a half-burnt house and so much pitch that he almost burned down the whole village. And the year before that Astrid climbed to the top of a sixty-two foot pine and picked a sprig of mistletoe. But no one in Berk had yet built a twelve foot diameter flaming sunwheel. That's why I was going to be the first.

I had worked out the basic design myself. It needed to be structurally sound so that it wouldn't collapse before it reached the bottom of the hill, but it needed plenty of inflammable material so that it would burn magnificently all the way down. It had taken days for Toothless and me to collect all the wood for it, but the sunwheel was almost finished. All I still needed to do was find a good hill to roll it down.

Today didn't start out too well. I woke up to find that Toothless had somehow gotten inside and had chewed up my dad's favourite hammer. I managed to hide all the pieces before my dad woke up, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he found out about it.

I helped Gobber in the forge for a few hours on some last minute repairs to cooking utensils that were going to be used for the feast later that day. We finished up and, hoping my dad wasn't anywhere nearby, I was about to slip off to find Toothless, when a huge hand the size of my head suddenly clamped down on my shoulder and a voice roared in my ear,

"Happy Yule, Hiccup!"

"Dad!" I said, nearly falling over backwards.

"I've got a present for you," he said next, handing me a new leather-bound notebook. Not that he usually gave me notebooks—he'd never given me anything that wasn't intended either to protect some part of myself or crush some part of someone else. A notebook for a present meant that he was working on being more understanding of my unique personality.

"Thanks," I said, feeling horribly guilty and wondering why everything horrible had to happen to me. Also thinking of how much angrier my dad was going to be when he found out about his hammer after being so nice to me.

"Well, take the day off and enjoy yourself," he said, with a slap on my back that sent me flying.

I picked myself up and went to find Toothless. He was waiting for me outside the village and together we went off in search of the finishing touches to our sunwheel. It only needed a few more branches to fill it out nicely.

Please don't ask me why I had thought this would be a fun thing to do. It had seemed like a good idea when it had still been in the planning stages and all I had had to do was sit next to the fire and draw diagrams. Now I was stumbling about in a pine forest digging around beneath mounds of wet snow while Toothless amused himself by knocking into trees so that ice would fall on my head.

I was wet through and about to give up when I heard an odd noise, like all the viking women in Berk yelling at each other at the top of their lungs—only, the way it would have sounded from about five miles away. Toothless was curious so I followed him to the edge of the woods.

Below us was a saltwater marsh filled with dead reeds and a huge flock of migratory birds. The birds were what were making all the noise. I have no idea why birds had decided to land in such a horrible place as Berk, but that was their problem, not mine. It was the perfect chance for me to make it up to my dad for his favourite hammer. With Toothless's help I caught six wild geese.

When I arrived back in the village, I dumped the geese inside my house so no one would steal them and then went to where I had left the sunwheel. On the way I passed Ruffnut and Tuffnut arguing over who had carried the most wood for the bonfire. All the teens had been planning this huge bonfire for weeks, hoping to outdo Snotlout's accidental success of last year. The trouble was, everyone wanted to light it and no one wanted to go find the wood for it. Wood was indispensable, since there were no more half-burned-down houses to torch.

A note on the bonfire lighting: wouldn't it be easier to simply get one of their pet dragons to light it? Answer: yes, but not as much fun.

Every Yule the teens like to do these dumb, attention-grabbing stunts. This year they had promised the village something spectacular, which meant that all the grown-ups had at least three or four buckets of water handy in case of emergencies. Apparently it was going to be some kind of bonfire, but the village elder had made them build it on the beach so that it could be easily pushed into the sea in case it got out of hand.

"I'm hoping for some serious burns," I could hear Ruffnut saying. I hurried on up the hill before I had to hear any more.

Near the great hall I bumped into Snotlout's dad who asked me where the Yule log was. He was supposed to carry it to the great hall—which was the only place with a fireplace big enough to hold the enormous log—but apparently he couldn't find it anywhere. I told him I hadn't seen it and hurried on.

I couldn't find my sunwheel in the forge where I had left it and, since it was far too big a thing to lose, I immediately suspected foul play. I hurried around the corner and found Fishlegs attempting to make off with it. It being twelve feet in diameter as I have mentioned, the act was hardly clandestine.

"No, wait; wait!" I cried. "What are you doing?!"

"Huh?" said Fishlegs, attempting to turn around and getting the wheel stuck between two houses as he did it. "Oh, Hiccup. Hello."

"Where are you taking that?" I asked.

"Nowhere," said Fishlegs, which was obvious, since he couldn't get it extricated from the windows he'd managed to get it stuck through.

"Well, why did you take it?" I asked. "It's mine. I spent hours making it."

"Sorry, Hiccup," said Fishlegs. "Snotlout said we needed it for the bonfire."

"But you can't just take it," I said. "Do you know how long it took me to build it?"

"It was Astrid's idea," said Fishlegs.

I almost relented. But then I remembered that it was the biggest sunwheel Berk had ever seen. Or was going to be, anyway. I couldn't let it be wasted on an ordinary bonfire.

"Toothless!" I shouted, grabbing hold of my sunwheel with both hands.

Fishlegs is a pushover and would have let me take it, but Snotlout appeared just then and knocked me over. Then Toothless showed up and knocked Snotlout over. Then there was a free-for-all for about two minutes that didn't stop until we heard a strange sound.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

It was Fishlegs yelling at the top of his voice. I looked around and saw that the sunwheel was rolling down the hill and everything it was bumping into was falling over. I jumped up and ran after it.

I chased that thing all the way down through the village while vikings screamed and got out of the way. Several sheep got run over and one or two houses were damaged, but the sunwheel didn't stop until it reached our house and smashed up against the front door.

I arrived just as my dad was pushing aside the wreckage so he could get out of the house.

"Hiccup!" he shouted.

"Uh, Dad, it wasn't my fault!" I said hastily. Then I stopped. He was holding the pieces of his chewed hammer and looking singularly lacking in Yuletide spirit.

"Hiccup!" he said again, no less loudly than before, even though I was standing right in front of him.

"Okay, but I caught some wild geese," I said, although I didn't really think it would help. It didn't.

"Go to your room while I clean up the mess you made!" he shouted.

I had to obey, even though I heard him telling Gobber to get rid of my sunwheel. I sat at my desk for the rest of the afternoon, rolling a pencil around and thinking of a fitting revenge for the other teens.

It gets dark early at Yule, of course, and as the sun went down, people began to make sure they had their buckets of water nearby and at the ready. I watched the big pile of wood sitting at the edge of the water and wondered how the teens were planning to light it. Suddenly I noticed something sticking out of the pile.

"Dad!" I called loudly.

"What is it?" I heard him say from downstairs.

"I found the Yule log!"

A few minutes later I was standing with my dad, Snotlout, and Snotlout's dad next to the pile of wood. This time it was Snotlout who was getting chewed out, which suited me fine.

"Well, we figured it would look cooler burning out here than in the big hall," said Snotlout, as soon as my dad gave him a chance to speak.

"You just were too lazy to collect more wood," said Gobber, appearing on the scene of the crime to retrieve his wooden leg, which one of the teens had added to the pile.

"What's going on?" said Astrid, coming up with a bucket of pitch.

"Hiccup found the Yule log," said Snotlout, ignoring my attempts to keep him quiet.

"What?!" said Astrid.

"Uh, well, you know," I said, "it really counts as stealing."

"You son of a half-troll, rat-eating, lunch bucket!" she yelled.

"Beard of Thor!" yelled Gobber suddenly. "What is that?"

I turned to see something huge, flaming, and twelve feet tall come hurtling down the hill like a drunken cart wheel, spreading conflagration as it came.

"Look ooouuuuuuttttt!" shouted Fishlegs, who seemed to be somewhere in its vicinity. Nothing could be clearly seen but the huge wheel, and it was coming straight towards us.

"Uh, if that's a bucket of pitch," I began, turning to Astrid, "maybe you should—"

"Hyaah!" she screamed, flinging it at my head.

I ducked. The bucket landed on the pile of wood behind me. I heard several more screams (one of them was Astrid as Toothless tackled her). I turned around just in time to see the sunwheel collide with the pile of wood and a searing light leap up into the air. The ground shook and I went sailing through the air.

"Whoa, that was sick!" shrieked Ruffnut.

"Did you see that?" said Fishlegs. "There was like a huge mushroom cloud."

I slowly picked myself up and looked around. The whole village seemed to be on fire. Grown ups were rushing around with buckets of water and flinging it over the crackling flames. Screams filled the air. It looked like a dragon raid.

The bonfire itself was blazing gloriously, but it was hanging halfway off the edge of the rock ledge it had been built on. As we all stared at it, it slowly tipped up and dove straight into the water with a hiss and a cloud of steam. Blackened sticks bobbed up here and there and several yards out the Yule log itself rose to the surface, still wreathed in burning pitch, and floated placidly out to sea like a flaming funeral ship.

"Come on, Toothless," I said. "Get us out of here, bud."

"HICCUUUUP!"

I turned around slowly. "Sorry...Dad," I said.

"Go to your room!" my dad shouted.

"Uh," I said, "it's on fire."

So here I am sitting in the darkest, furthest corner of the forge, hiding behind Toothless and hoping Dad won't find me any time soon. The one bright spot in all of this is that for once the other teens are in trouble too and they're being made to put out the fire.

Next Yule I'm going to stick to overeating like a normal viking.

**The End**

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><p>Okay, so they weren't technically laying. Wrong time of year. Anyways...<p>

Visit **Lily Lindsey-Aubrey's** page tomorrow for the next story, **In Search of the North Pole**. It's a *gulp* *choke* *cough cough* Pirates of the Caribbean fanfiction. Okay, done now.


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